Colin Cowherd’s Next Act: A Digital Media Empire

Every weekday afternoon at precisely 3 p.m. Eastern, Colin Cowherd’s familiar presence disappears from Fox Sports television and more than 400 syndicated radio stations nationwide. For most broadcasters, that would mark the end of the workday. For Cowherd, it signals a pivot.

Once The Herd signs off, Cowherd moves from the role that made him one of the country’s most recognizable sports talk personalities into a job he now finds equally — if not more — compelling: running The Volume, the independent media company he founded in 2021. If Cowherd is Fox’s franchise quarterback in the mornings, the afternoons are reserved for a different position entirely. “This is my NFL general manager job,” he says.

Cowherd, 62, has been able to take an unusually patient approach to building the business. Thanks to lucrative contracts with Fox Sports and Premiere Networks, an iHeart Media subsidiary that produces his radio show, he has financed The Volume entirely himself. He has not drawn a salary from the company, nor has he taken outside capital — a rarity during a period when independent media networks have commanded eye-popping valuations. In recent years, Spotify paid a reported $250 million for Bill Simmons’ The Ringer, while iHeart committed $200 million to expand Charlamagne Tha God’s Black Effect network.

Cowherd’s wager is that ownership, not speed, will ultimately deliver the greater payoff.

Four years in, the bet appears to be gaining traction. The Volume now employs roughly 60 people and operates a slate of 25 shows featuring a diverse mix of voices: former athletes like Richard Sherman and Jeff Teague; musicians including Fat Joe and Jadakiss; and opinion-driven broadcasters such as Fox Sports’ Nick Wright. According to the company, its programming generates more than 15 million podcast downloads and over 100 million YouTube views each month. Forbes estimates annual revenue at approximately $60 million, with profits of at least $10 million — numbers that suggest a valuation north of $300 million.

Cowherd’s own programs remain central to the brand, but they are not the business. Less than one-fifth of The Volume’s revenue comes from The Herd and The Colin Cowherd Podcast, according to the company. Cowherd says every show in the network is profitable — a milestone the company reached in 2025 after earlier growing pains.

“We have a little Moneyball,” he says from his home in Chicago, where he relocated last year after decades in Los Angeles. “We have a model that works. I don’t know what the hit rate is on podcasts for most companies, but for us it’s now 100%, everything is profitable and I would say, overwhelmingly, it’s a win for us and the talent we work with. We want the creators to make lots of money – that’s important to us.”

Unlike other personality-driven media ventures, The Volume was never designed as an extension of its founder’s worldview. Where Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze reflects a singular political identity and Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports leans into a specific cultural sensibility, Cowherd has taken a different approach. The Volume operates more like a services platform — a white-label infrastructure that allows creators to build their own audiences without being tethered to Cowherd’s personal brand or even to one another.

Listeners of The Richard Sherman Podcast are not expected to migrate to Jeff Teague’s Club 520, nor are they necessarily meant to recognize that both shows live under the same corporate umbrella. That separation, Cowherd believes, makes the network more flexible — and less fragile.

Profitability has depended as much on restraint as on scale. In a marketplace where top-tier podcast talent can command guarantees ranging from $10 million to $30 million, many networks absorb losses on flagship shows to attract advertisers and downstream creators. Cowherd has avoided that strategy.

“We don’t necessarily think the way to do it is go top of the market and get into bidding wars,” he says. “We think there’s all sorts of talent out there that’s underappreciated, under marketed, underproduced.”

The Volume’s clearest point of differentiation may be its emphasis on video — a requirement, not an option, for every show on the network. YouTube, according to research from Cumulus Media, is now the largest podcast platform globally, surpassing Spotify by more than two-to-one and Apple Podcasts by nearly three-to-one. For Cowherd, video is not just about distribution but about professionalism.

Over the past two years, the network’s YouTube viewership has quadrupled, rising from roughly 25 million monthly views in 2023 to more than 100 million in 2025.

“The things that Colin’s team is making, those are what we used to call TV shows,” says Jamie Horowitz, who has worked with Cowherd at ESPN and Fox and now collaborates with him at The Volume. “There’s video and B-roll and graphics, so effectively they made a TV network, and they also happen to distribute those shows on audio.”

Horowitz points to Cowherd’s early decision to hire Logan Swaim — formerly of DAZN — to oversee content as foundational. Swaim joined in February 2021 and quickly assembled a production team with deep television experience, shaping both the network’s visual identity and its eclectic roster.

“We’ve created a world where talent can thrive, and a culture where we can recruit great teammates to make us even better,” said Swaim, who previously served as a showrunner on Good Morning Football. “We believe people are our most important asset.”

On the commercial side, the company has steadily brought sales in-house. Dane Aagaard, The Volume’s chief revenue officer, was recruited from Barstool Sports to build a direct sales operation that has reduced reliance on third-party ad sellers and improved margins. While podcast ads remain the largest revenue contributor, company executives say revenue is now split roughly evenly between direct brand deals, audio advertising sold through iHeart, and YouTube AdSense.

“We build real relationships between advertisers and our talent, which creates authentic endorsement,” says Aagaard. “That approach has helped us build long-term partnerships with brands like Boost Mobile, Netflix, Apple, Olipop and Ro — driving awareness, sales, tune-in and real word-of-mouth.”

The rise of companies like The Volume coincides with a period of retrenchment across traditional media, as legacy conglomerates cut costs and narrow output. At the same time, distinctions between television and digital video continue to erode — a convergence already familiar to radio and podcasting.

Major institutions are taking notice. This year, the Golden Globes introduced a podcast category, and Netflix has begun licensing video podcasts for its platform. On Sunday, the streamer released the first of several shows sourced from networks including The Ringer, Barstool Sports, and three titles from The Volume: Joe and Jada, New Rory & MAL, and 3 and Out with John Middlekauff.

With greater attention has come intensified competition. “There’s definitely an arms race element to it,” says Swaim.

Cowherd, for his part, appears energized by the dynamic. “I like the pursuit,” he says. “I like the chase.” While he acknowledges that his on-air career may be entering its final chapter — he suggests another decade is plausible — he has no plans to sell The Volume.

“I work at Fox and iHeart because I’m treated well and I really enjoy it—and yes, it’s lucrative,” Cowherd says. “A lot of people on-air need that juice. They love to perform. I love to build. I can perform, but I like to build rants, to build content, to build a company.”